by Mackel Garrison
Organizing around public transit in Chicago has been tough to do. Fare increases, service cuts or the threat of what we call “Doomsday” come up every couple of years on our system. It is becoming normalized for a lot of people and there are few groups taking it on. Though Chicago has had its share of attempts to organize around public transit in the last decade.
In 2003, class struggle anarchist organization Midwest Unrest organized a fare strike to protest a fare increase with some success. Fare increases were delayed 6 months.
In 2007, Rider Driver Alliance (RDA) took on a massive Doomsday threat to cut 1/2 of all bus lines, make fare increases and so on. RDA brought together transit workers, riders and paratransit riders in a common struggle. It’s three demands were to “Stop The Cuts”, “Open the Books”, and to run the system “Not On Our Backs.” Though lasting only one fall and with no funding, 20-60 people met regularly, packed hearings, and rallied on these demands. The effort was styled after the LA Bus Riders Union in some respects. RDA differed from local advocacy groups, churches, and green groups who were backing a state-sponsored regressive funding bill. RDA activists successfully disrupted a Congressional Hearing on transit funding, though Mayor Daley managed to skip the federal briefing for a West Side press op at a military school. The coalition effort disbanded under pressure of personalities and different political priorities.
Community based organizations have remained constant in the background, doing patient, long-term work. Developing Communities Project has been organizing around the extension of the Red Line to Chicago’s far South Side. Commute times in this area often exceed 2 hours. This project has been denied African-American communities for over 45 years.
On the West Side, I’ve been working with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO). During the 1990s LVEJO worked in coalition on train capital infrastructure and service levels in primarily Mexican American and African American working class neighborhoods. The coalition was successful in winning a $479 million rehab of a train line. Later a partial victory restored weekend train service. In the 2000s, foundation money evaporated for transit work and a lot of groups moved on. We’ve struggled to stay focused on it.
We’ve had a campaign for the last couple of years to try to start a CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) bus route on 31st st. This is a route that got the axe during the Gingrich Congress of the late 90s. It’s absence has lengthened or ruled out trips to work, school, the store, etc. We began with a visioning project where we asked the community members what issues were affecting them. Bus service was something that came up. Later on in the campaign, we talked to people about what features a potential bus route should have and what destinations it should reach. We had meetings at churches and schools, gave presentations, had volunteers circulate a petition, and had youth go door-to-door at local businesses. We also did a project where people could write their comments on a big map, which we brought around to public events.
We got the Chicago Transit Authority to agree to pursue a federal grant to fund the project, which was really exciting. The money would cover half the total expenses. After all the press ops to look like they were doing justice to a minority community though, CTA got slow on delivering the goods. We had to get pushy for awhile.
Now CTA’s austerity budget has neutralized the effort to add new routes. Fare hikes were delayed 2 years with a bond measure, increasing state debt. But in February, CTA cut 9% of El Service (elevated train) and 18% of bus service. An unveiled attack on the union also went down, but union leadership was not prepared to organize against it. They got into rallies after community organizations and ANSWER were seen at CTA headquarters with pickets saying “No Layoffs” Refusing wage and pension concessions, the union saw 1060 layoffs.
Back at LVEJO, a lot of our work has shifted to our involvement in a Strategy Center led campaign calling for to shift Congress’s $550 billion “Highway Bill” into an environmental justice, public transit bill. Our demand is to flip the script on the 82% that goes to highways and put that into urban mass transit instead. The demand is meant to educate on what it would really take to mitigate the impacts of climate change and institutional racism. The advocacy effort has been educational, but rank and file organizing and direct action are taking a back seat.
Fortunately, the recession has been an awakening slap in the face for LVEJO. Struggling to transcend Alinsky-style organizing, we are studying and propagandizing the capitalist attack on the public sector. Taking a class struggle approach has made us realize we need to have a relationship to labor. We’ve been taking a trial and error approach to engaging union local execs, rank-and-filers as well as the new Keep America Moving Coalition at the national level. We are quickly learning to steer toward the grassroots and have been meeting and supporting the actions of laid-off CTA workers, even when union brass doesn’t show much effort to turn out support.
The Copenhagen climate fiasco also helped us make an explicit theoretical break with capitalist proposals for climate change. If we are rejecting false solutions to climate change, we are still wondering at the tactical implications for our praxis. We are beginning with popular education to organize transit workers, riders, and other local organizations around the counter-hegemonic demands of our local campaign, but we need to have deeper exploration of what it means that the state controls public transit.
Another idea for a transit coop has come about through conversations with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). IWW and LVEJO have been looking into what it would take to form a worker self-managed, community controlled, transit cooperative to run bus service. We are exploring if we can run a better service, with union scale wages and benefits, for less cost. We may not be able to replace the CTA but we can show them up for awhile. This would also set an example of workplace democracy and community accountability, two things that riders don’t really see from the Daley-controlled CTA. Everything will depend on what neighbors and workers say they want, when we go out to talk to them this summer.
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Mackel Garrison organizes with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization. He is also a member of Four Star Anarchist Organization and the IWW. He is interested in the struggle against capitalism for a free and ecological society, and what that might look like right where we live.
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